Monday, September 24, 2012

Muggle Monday (22): The Casual Vacancy Release Week

It's time for Muggle Monday, in which I post a quote, a video, or a significant piece of news from the Harry Potter franchise. This is somewhat inspired by theMundane Mondayposts byThe Mundie Moms.But let's be real as to why I made up this meme: I just want the opportunity to post something about Harry Potter.

This week, I'm featuring J.K. Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy - the release date for which is this Thursday, September 27! I can't believe it's happening this week! Where did all the time go? As part of the promotion for the book, Jo has been taking part in interviews and a brand new synopsis - much more detailed than the previous - has been released to explain to us what this enigma of a novel is going to be about:

The story opens with the death of a parish councillor in the pretty West Country village of Pagford. Barry had grown up on a nearby council estate, the Fields, a squalid rural ghetto with which the more pious middle classes of Pagford have long lost patience. If they can fill his seat with one more councillor sympathetic to their disgust, they'll secure a majority vote to reassign responsibility for the Fields to a neighbouring council, and be rid of the wretched place for good.The pompous chairman assumes the seat will go to his son, a solicitor. Pitted against him are a bitterly cold GP and a deputy headmaster crippled by irreconcilable ambivalence towards his son, an unnervingly self-possessed adolescent whose subversion takes the unusual but highly effective form of telling the truth. His preoccupation with "authenticity" develops into a fascination with the Fields and its most notorious family, the Weedons.Terri Weedon is a prostitute, junkie and lifelong casualty of chilling abuse, struggling to stay clean to stop social services taking her three-year-old son, Robbie, into care. But methadone is a precarious substitute for heroin, and most of what passes for mothering falls to her teenage daughter, Krystal. Spirited and volatile, Krystal has known only one adult ally in her life – Barry – and his sudden death casts her dangerously adrift. When anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers' secrets, Pagford unravels into a panic of paranoia, rage and tragedy.

“I think there is a through-line,” Rowling said. “Mortality, morality, the two things that I obsess about.” “The Casual Vacancy” is not a whodunnit but, rather, a rural comedy of manners that, having taken on state-of-the-nation social themes, builds into black melodrama. Its attention rotates among several Pagford households, in the Southwest of England: a gourmet-grocery owner and his wife; two doctors; a nurse married to a printer; a social worker. Most of the families include troubled teens. “It’s been billed, slightly, as a black comedy, but to me it’s more of a comic tragedy,” she said. If the novel had precedents, “it would be sort of nineteenth-century: the anatomy and the analysis of a very small and closed society.” A local election was “a perfect way in,” she said. “It’s the smallest possible building block of democracy—this tiny atom on which everything rests.” One could say that national politics does not rest upon local politics, and that no modern British town is a closed society; some of Rowling’s characters may seem eccentric for the earnestness with which they regard a local election. She acknowledged that the scale of parish-council decision-making is “easy to laugh at” but said that “part of the point is that those decisions that are being made do dramatically affect people’s lives, up to life and death sometimes.”“In my head, the working title for a long time was ‘Responsible,’ because for me this is a book about responsibility. In the minor sense—how responsible we are for our own personal happiness, and where we find ourselves in life—but in the macro sense also, of course: how responsible we are for the poor, the disadvantaged, other people’s misery.” Two years in, she picked up the standard British handbook for local administrators. “I needed it to check certain abstruse points. And in there I came across the phrase ‘a casual vacancy.’ Meaning, when a seat falls vacant through death or scandal. And immediately I knew that that was the title. . . . I was dealing not only with responsibility but with a bunch of characters who all have these little vacancies in their lives, these emptinesses in their lives, that they’re all filling in various ways.”

With terms like "black melodrama" and "comic tragedy" being thrown around, I am officially very much intrigued with The Casual Vacancy. I just know that Jo is going to be able bring those themes to life with her brilliance perfectly. Another thing she does well is building complex webs of character relations and it sounds like she'll be putting that ability to use in The Casual Vacancy - the story will follow several different families in the town of Pagford. I will admit that I do still have slight doubt about the premise - I never thought I would be finding myself reading about an English village's parish-council election. Jo's involvement is pretty much the only reason I would ever consider reading about such a banal subject. But I do have absolute confidence in her storytelling abilities, her sense of humour, and her clever imagination. I can't wait to read The Casual Vacancy (hopefully right when it comes out)! My review may be posted a few weeks later, however, due to prior review commitments.

How about you? Will you be reading J.K. Rowling's first post-Potter book, and if so, will you be reading it as soon as possible or waiting a bit? Will you be purchasing it or borrowing it? Do you plan on posting a review on your blog? Let me know in the comments!

I plan to read it, but I'm a little nervous. Usually when I read a book surrounded by so much hype, it can be hit or miss. Of course, it IS J. K. Rowling, so I'll probably go out and buy a copy to read it before the fuss starts! :)

I'm definitely going to be reading The Casual Vacancy! :D I'm not sure what to expect since it isn't Harry Potter, and HP is still pretty much what I associate with JK Rowling! haha But, I'm definitely looking forward to it, and I'll be reading it as soon as possible. :) I've requested a copy of it from HBG Canada, so I'm planning on reviewing it on my blog. :) Makes me kind of want to reread HP and review them, too...if only there was enough time for that kind of commitment in the school year. :P

I am definitely going to read it, but I'm requesting it from the library. I think I'm 8th on the list so may have to wait for it to come through. If I love it I will then buy it afterwards, but as it's not my usual sort of read I want to try it through the library first. :D

Your review of this one is going to determine if I read this book, Aylee. I love the Harry Potter series but this has a totally different feel to it, and sometimes authors tend to have trouble making the leap between age ranges or genres. I really like the aspect of responsibility that she mentions though.

I'm so excited. I hadn't read the full summary or other comments from her on the book until now, so thanks for this. I can't believe it's coming out this week either. It's insane. I plan to buy the book as soon as I can and then read it as soon as I can. LOL So much to read for school and everything else, I need to just find the time. But I do hope to review the book on my blog once I'm through it.

I want to read it as soon as it comes out too. I hope I can! I've also heard it being compared to Dickens. I think Jo herself was the one that said that. The more I hear about it the more I want to read it.

My copy has already been pre-ordered, altough I'm from Brazil, so it'll take up to 10 days after the release for the mail to arrive, haha :( Well, I can't help but to expect much from this novel, and I am also a little afraid of it not living up to it...

I can't wait for this! I have really high expectations and I'm hoping that when it's brilliant! Mainly I'm just glad that I'm reading another book by J.K Rowling :)Awesome Blog- especially the header!Alex @ Possession of Books

I am so freaking excited for The Casual Vacancy! Like you, this is probably a book I would never, ever read if it wasn't written by J.K. Rowling but my love and respect for her work is overwhelming and of course I'll read her first non-Harry Potter book. I had not actually read that mini-interview from J.K. Rowling, but it makes me even more secure in the knowledge that this will be a clever, well-planned novel. I can't wait to read it myself, and I look forward to reading your thoughts on it!

Yeah, I never had any doubt that anything Jo would write would be clever and brilliant, as it always is, but it was really nice getting some insight with this interview. I can't wait to see how everyone in the book blogger community reacts to it!

I pre-ordered the book, of course, and Amazon hasn't delivered it yet (a curse upon them; why didn't they use owl post like reasonable people??) But I absolutely can't wait... thanks for the new, fuller synopsis-- I hadn't read it yet.